"On the move" blogging

Okay, now this might sound a bit like a technical boohoo, or like the confessions of a bloody technocrat a geek; but here I go... cant resist the temptation of just blabbering it out :-)

As I "write" this directly on to blogger.com, I'm cruising in a super fast "national rail" train to "Newcastle" in northern England, a place just below Scotland (to meet my cousine brother and his family). I started at 6 am from Ipswich, (South-east England); time is now 8:40 am, and I still have over another hour to reach my destination.

Gone are those days when train journeys used to be unproductive... Here I sit with my "HTC touch diamond" Pocket PC running windows mobile 6.1 (which also, by the way, serves as my mobile phone). Connected to the train's wireless internet, I'm browsing the net, scribbling emails using the stylus directly on to the touch screen which dynamically recognizes my handwriting and transcribes it into ASCII text...

Fearless!

Its called "fight or flight", and we all choose one of the two, when confronted with a hostile situation. We either avoid the situation, or decide to face it chin up.

What do you think the majority chooses? Lets take some situations, right from childhood (my non-Indian readers might not be able to relate to most of the following):

1. You are a 6 year old kid, playing in your front garden. A ragged man comes by, and peers over the fence. You study him for a few moments, he looks dirty, he has a rucksack, his hair long and grown, he looks at you and grins. Would you just resume what ever you were doing, or would you run back home to your parents?

The magic of incentives

Sitting late at office is a common trend found among (very) young Indian IT professionals. There are many reasons why it is so, probably I'll have another article on it later, as it by itself is a topic worth writing. Anyways, everybody accepts that its not really good for both - the employee, as well as the employer. Its the employer who has the most obvious repercussions, and each keeps reminding their employees in various ways to get out of office in time, not to sit late, and have a life outside. Well, the trend hasn't changed a bit in the past many years I myself have been observing it; people still sit late - most of them, browsing the internet, or even playing games. I'm not considering the ones who genuinely work, in this article, that again would need another account of itself :-).

Now, if you go and ask many of these folks why they sit late at office, they might have many reasons, but at the end, if you put all these reasons together and factorize and re-factorize them, you'll find that people don't leave office in time, because they don't have an incentive to! While, to sit back, they have enough and more.

The importance of co-locating your team

Sometime ago, back in one of my previous projects, I had to ramp up my team by one, to resource some new work that came in. The new person was a 1.x years experienced lady, with technical skill set cohering with what I required in my team.

Now, before this lady came in, my team used to sit in two large multi-occupant cubicles, with just a small partition in between, which practically made it a large bullpen. This facilitated much interaction between the team members, who utilized it well to maximize exchange of information & knowledge, and of course jokes and light moments. I too found it most efficient in conducting stand-up scrums and short ad-hoc meetings, as we just had to pull our chairs together into a circle, and not hunt for a meeting room. We had consumed all seats in the two cubicles, and there were none free, when the new lady came in.

Creating a bolder generation

A few months ago, back in Kerala, I was on a visit to a certain school for some social work. It was lunch time, and kids generally play around for a while, before getting back for afternoon sessions. I walked around through the school grounds, watching the kids play, and kinda reliving the moments of my own childhood.

It was a muffled cry which drew my attention to near a tree, where three kids were standing around. They seemed around eleven or twelve; there was a girl, and two boys. It was the girl who was crying, and the expressions / body language of the boys did look a bit nasty for their age. It seemed that the boys had said something, and the girl had started crying. I looked around if any of the staff were around; upon seeing none, started towards the trio, intending to solve the issue. But hardly had I reached there, when another little girl came running towards the three.

A monsoon to haunt!

The dark sky pelleted again; this time with heavier drops.
The waiter peeped out of the veranda door and called out, "Sir, you might want to move inside - you'll get wet".
I smiled and waved him off "Its okay, I'm enjoying it".
"Fine, sir", he smiled and disappeared.

It was half past six on a Friday evening, and I sat there at the Coffee beanz veranda atop Bhavani, watching the soft steam whirling away from my hot cup of Mocha beans.

The view from here is awesome, especially on a clear day! The roof-top of Bhavani, which itself is on a hill, is like 250 feet above sea level. What do you need to relax after a tough day at work..? I'll say, all you need is this lush green coconut tree canopy spread around, melting into the million crimson mirrors of Arabian sea; the sweet air of coastal Kerala gently caressing your hair; the calm distant blue-green mountains of the Western Ghats... and of course, a hot cup of mocha and a musical backdrop of Ray Charles or Norah Jones.

അനന്തസ്നേഹത്തില്‍ ആശ്രയം തേടി...

പ്രശനങ്ങളും പ്രതിസന്ധികളും ജീവിതത്തില്‍ സാധാരണമാണ്. ഒട്ടു മിക്ക പ്രശ്നങ്ങളും നാം ദൈനംദിന കര്‍മ്മങ്ങള്‍ പോലെ പരിഹരിച്ചു പോരുന്നു... പക്ഷേ, ചിലപ്പോള്‍ ചിലവ വരുന്നു... നമ്മുക്കു പരിഹരിയ്ക്കാന്‍ പ്രയാസമുള്ളവ... അപ്പോഴാണു നാം പതറുക.

സുപരിചിതമായ ഒരു ശബ്ദം ഞാന്‍ കേട്ടു: “ഒരു ഉപമ ഞാന്‍ പറയാം, നീ കേള്‍ക്കുക.

മുറ്റത്തു ചിതറിക്കിടന്ന കുഞ്ഞു കല്ലുകള്‍ പെറുക്കിവച്ച് കളിയ്ക്കുകയായിരുന്നു, ഒരു അഞ്ചുവയസ്സുകാരന്‍. അവന്റെ കുഞ്ഞുകൈകളില്‍ ഒതുങ്ങുന്ന പാറക്കല്ലുകള്‍ അവന്‍ ഓടിനടന്നു പെറുക്കി. ഇത്തിരി സമയം കൊണ്ട് അവിടെ ഉണ്ടായിരുന്ന കുഞ്ഞു കല്ലുകള്‍ മുഴുവന്‍ തീര്‍ന്നു. അവന്റെ ദൃഷ്ടി, ഇത്തിരികൂടി വലിയ ഒരു കല്ലില്‍ പതിഞ്ഞു. അവന്‍ അതില്‍ കൈകള്‍ വച്ചു. ഒന്നു വലിച്ചു, പക്ഷേ, കല്ല് അനങ്ങിയില്ല, അത് അവന്റെ ശക്തിയ്ക്കതീതമായിരുന്നു. അവന്‍ പരാജയം സമ്മതിച്ചില്ല; വീണ്ടും വലിച്ചു നോക്കി. കൈ തെന്നി അവന്‍ മണ്ണില്‍ വീണു. പക്ഷേ, അവന്‍ വീണ്ടും എഴുന്നേറ്റു, ഉത്സാഹത്തോടെ അതില്‍ തള്ളി നോക്കി. കല്ല് വഴങ്ങിയില്ല. അവന്റെ മന്ദഹാസം മായാന്‍ തുടങ്ങി,